I am often asked about sea trout flies and which ones I find best. Let me say immediately that each river tends to have its own favourites, but there are certainly a few patterns I always carry with me.
Teal Blue and Silver Variant
I divide my seatrout patterns into 3 main categories:
1. Small or standard patterns
For me key standard size patterns would include flies such as the teal blue and silver, black pennell, kill devil spider, butcher, dunkeld and peter ross. I would generally have these in sizes 14 to 8 and a few “wee doubles”.
Peter Ross
One of my personal favourites is the Gold Alexandra. The variant I tie is pictured below.
Gold Alexandra Variant
2. Larger flies/tandems/surface lures
In the larger flies I fish mainly blue/silver patterns like the medicine fly, black silver patterns and orange and gold patterns. I find it useful to have a selection of flies tied on low water singles, doubles, tandems and a few snake flies.
I tend to use two types of surface fly for night time fishing. These would be foam type flies and also flies tied with deer hair (muddlers). As a general rule the darker the night the bigger the surface fly I fish.
To conclude, having fished for seatrout on my local rivers for the past thirty years, my approach would be to have a small selection of patterns but be sure to have flies of various sizes, along with a few surface lures.
Game Fishing Ireland 